Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences News

Colin Sumrall, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences, will look at the transformation of a lineage of small carnivorous dinosaurs into birds and show why we are still living in the age of the dinosaurs. His Science Forum talk, “The Origin of Birds: Did the Age of Dinosaurs Really End?” will be held at noon on Friday, October 9, in Room C-D of Thompson-Boling Arena.

Undergraduate student Chad Melton witnessed history this week as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted a flyby of Pluto, giving humankind its first-ever up-close look of the dwarf planet and its five moons.

The International Business Times featured Noemi Pinilla-Alonso, a UT postdoctoral student, in this story about NASA’s flyby of Pluto on July 14. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will gather data to help scientists better understand the dwarf planet. Pinilla-Alonso will be the lead investigator of a new seven-day series of observations beginning July 23.

Fans of the Jurassic Park movies are counting down the days until the June 12 release of the latest dinosaur flick, Jurassic World. UT Professor Stephanie Drumheller-Horton, a vertebrate paleontologist based in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is writing a seven-part series for online publication Red Orbit highlighting the dinosaurs featured in the new movie. Part